


quartered shades of sun and moon

by glitteratiglue



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, First Time, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Pining, cameo appearances by lots of characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 09:22:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4999366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteratiglue/pseuds/glitteratiglue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is reaped for the 74th Hunger Games; Bucky volunteers in his place.</p><p>(Hunger Games fusion.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	quartered shades of sun and moon

**Author's Note:**

> The Steve and Bucky Hunger Games crossover nobody asked for: [this post](http://glitteratiglue.tumblr.com/post/131220584510/um-can-we-talk-about-steve-and-bucky-being-in-a) on my tumblr explains more. Title from [this](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-see-boys-summer) Dylan Thomas poem.
> 
> AU for Cap. AU for Hunger Games - broadly follows canon events, but a lot of plot elements twisted for my own purposes. See tags for warnings. Thanks to evieeden for talking me down off the ledge on this one.

Bucky pulls his one good shirt from the hanger; there's a rip in the side of it. He frowns.

“Guess I’d better mend this.”

“Give it here,” Steve says, already digging around in the cupboard for the sewing kit.

Bucky watches as Steve threads the needle and drives it in and out of the fabric, carefully knotting off his small stitches. He’s got careful, deft fingers, Steve: fingers that are usually covered in graphite smudges from the pencils and notebooks he carries around in his pockets. Bucky often finds himself staring at Steve's hands, more than he probably should.

Steve’s already dressed, his hair combed out over his forehead, wearing one of Bucky’s old shirts that’s a little loose on him. The blue fabric brings out his eyes; they’re clear oceans, placid and peaceful.

Bucky has no idea how Steve manages to be so calm on a day like today.

“It’s gonna be okay, you know?” Bucky says, smiling in a way that makes his cheeks ache.

“I know.” Steve looks at him sharply, as if to say he doesn’t need reassurance, and really, he doesn't. He knows all too well that Bucky is saying it for himself as much as for Steve.

It's the day of the reaping, and Bucky’s the one with his name in the hat thirty-seven times. Every time he signs up for tesserae, his ma cries and Steve looks at him with wide, fearful eyes; he sometimes tries to talk him out of it. Bucky never listens, because otherwise they’d starve; doing odd jobs at the Hob has never been enough to make ends meet. Besides, since his father died working in the mines, his mother’s struggled to make ends meet and support his three sisters.

It falls to Bucky to carry all these lives in his hands, and he does it because he doesn’t know what else to do.

So many nights, Bucky lies awake, listening to the sound of Steve struggling to breathe, afraid he’s going to lose him; they can’t always afford the medicines he needs. Steve is good at supplementing what they have with his own herbal remedies – his late ma was a healer, a damn good one by all accounts – but they don’t always cut it.

“There,” Steve says. He hands Bucky the newly mended shirt.

“Thanks,” Bucky says, still with that frozen smile on his face.

“Lighten up. You’d think you were gonna die, you big jerk.” Steve grins, his tone teasing.

Bucky summons up a false laugh in response; it’s the best he can do. In previous years, they’ve been better at keeping up the pretence that they’re not scared: laughing at President Coriolanus Snow’s pompous addresses to _the noble citizens of Panem_ , the cheesy interviews that the tributes have to go through. Making light of it makes it easier when they have to watch the games.

Steve’s always been the brave one, though his lungs aren’t much good for anything and he looks like a stiff breeze would knock him over. He’s been getting himself into fights since they were kids, punching above his weight like it’s nothing. Bucky gets him out of the fights when he can, and soothes the bruises and ices the black eyes when he can’t; he always scolds him, and Steve never takes a blind bit of notice.

Then again, brave isn’t always the word Bucky would use to describe Steve - sometimes  _stupid_ comes closer.

Last summer, Schmidt - the most sadistic peacekeeper ever to grace District 12 - was harassing their classmate, Lorraine Sowerby for selling illegal squirrels at the Hob. Steve, the idiotic bastard that he was, had stepped in. He’d saved Lorraine from her ten lashes, but for that, Schmidt had beaten Steve so badly Bucky thought it might have killed him. Bucky had helped his ma ice Steve’s back, and cried whenever he thought Steve was sleeping or too out of it to notice, wishing that Steve would have a little more sense in his head the next time he wanted to try and be a hero.

Bucky sucks in a shaky breath. He peels off his sweaty vest and goes to the basin to splash water on himself, trying to calm down.

He lifts his head to see Steve’s eyes fixed on his bare chest. Steve turns away, flushing. Bucky grabs a towel to dry off, tries not to think about the way his skin feels hot all over with just one look from his best friend.

They’re seventeen, and if they can just make it through this one year, then everything’ll be fine. No more Hunger Games. Except it won’t, because then they’ll have to go down the mines, and Bucky just knows that Steve’s weak constitution will never survive it. Steve will die down there, lungs full of coal dust, hacking like he already does on those long, drawn-out nights when his asthma flares up.

So yeah, Bucky knows what Steve wants. Sometimes he thinks he might want it, too, but with every successive year they stand in that cattle pen for the reaping, it gets harder to convince himself that it would be worth having Steve when he’s probably going to lose him, one way or another.

Their friendship is good as it is, and Bucky knows you shouldn't try to fix what isn't broken.

" _Bucky!"_   his mother's voice calls from the next room.  _"There's blackberry pie for you boys once you're dressed."_

Bucky grins. "C'mon, Stevie."

* * *

The midday sun is beating down on Bucky’s head as he stands in the square. At first he thinks he's heard it wrong, that he’s hallucinating with the heat.

Effie Trinket reads out Steve’s name.

Steve is silent and still at Bucky’s side when the Peacekeepers come to take him.

There’s no doubt in Bucky’s mind what he’s going to do.

He shoves forward. “I volunteer!”

* * *

When Steve’s eyes fix on Bucky’s, they are hurt and angry, full of betrayal.

Bucky knows then that Steve is never going to forgive him for this, but it’s worth it, it’s worth everything if it means he can save Steve, this one last time.

Madge Undersee, the mayor’s daughter is reaped alongside him. Bucky knows her from town festivals; they’ve danced close and even kissed a couple of times. Madge is sweet, always full of easy smiles and laughter. She isn’t laughing now.

Everything afterwards feels like a blur. His family are rushed into the Justice Building, and Steve isn’t there.

“How could you do this, Bucky?” his mother asks, pulling him into her arms. She smells like blackberry pie, and _Steve_ isn’t here. Suddenly, Bucky can’t hold back the tears.

“I’m sorry, ma. I’m sorry,” Bucky says thickly, through the tears that won’t stop pouring from his eyes.

He meets his older sister’s gaze.  The other two are in hysterics, but Becca is composed, not a single tear on her face; at fifteen, it’s her fourth year in the reaping, and she has long since learned how to hide away her fear.

“Becca, you’ve got to take care of Evie and Dot, you hear me?”

“I know, Bucky.” Then she leans over and whispers in his ear, “I thought that was so brave, what you did for Steve.”

“Tell him I’m sorry,” Bucky murmurs brokenly against her hair.

“I will.” She presses a small wooden mockingjay into his hand, along with Bucky’s favourite knife (he's always liked wood-carving, a hobby he fits around school and Steve and worrying about Steve). "I tried to get him to come in here, but he wouldn't."

There it is: Steve doesn't want to see him, and Bucky doesn't know whether he wants to laugh or start crying again.

“They’d better not see you giving me weapons.” Bucky laughs, wiping his eyes, but he pockets the gifts. “Thanks.”

His mother kisses him, and Bucky promises little Evie and Dot that he’ll come back to them, that everything’s going to be fine.

As the tribute train rolls away from their district, Madge slips a hand into his. She’s dry-eyed, calm, like a person who has already accepted their fate.

“Such a handsome boy!” trills Effie, beaming at Bucky through a peacock headdress. “They’re going to _love_ you in the Capitol.”

Bucky fingers the sharp, sharp flick knife in his pocket, and wonders if he is ready to kill. He wishes he could have said goodbye to Steve.

* * *

Haymitch Abernathy isn’t much of a mentor, but he’s certainly perceptive.

“I dunno, kid,” he says over dinner, leaning in close enough that Bucky can smell his breath, reeking of alcohol. “Think you’ve got a shot. There’s something real cold about you, though you hide it well. You’ve got the makings of a killer, Bucky Barnes. Mark my words.”

Training is hell: it quickly becomes apparent to Bucky that he’s in terrible shape, skinnier and weaker than the burly Career tributes. Bucky sweats pounds away until he figures out he has to stuff in his body’s weight of rich Capitol food in order to keep going. His muscles burn every day during the drills, but he starts to get stronger.

Sometimes, Madge comes to Bucky’s room and they talk about District 12, about their families, the friends they’ll see when they go back. She’s led a different life to him – as the mayor’s daughter, she wanted for nothing – but in the end they’ve both ended up here, facing their deaths.

“Are you scared?” Madge asks, one night when they’re on the roof of the training centre, the scraped-clean dishes from two ice-cream sundaes sitting at their feet.

“All the time,” Bucky says. “I’d be a fool if I wasn’t.”

He turns the little wooden mockingjay over in his hand – the small piece of home he has left – and hopes he is brave enough to die.

* * *

Bucky throws himself into knife training, marking himself out as someone to fear. He hits targets with a sharp and deadly force. The Careers start watching him.

He garners a score of eight from the gamemakers, enough to get him a few sponsors (Madge gets nine, and he’s a little curious as to how; he doesn’t want to ask).

In his interview with Caeser Flickerman, Bucky draws on all the full-wattage charm he can muster, the kind that’s worked on the District 12 girls since he was ten or so. Apparently, it works on the crowds of the Capitol, too: they laugh and sigh in all the right places. Then Bucky talks about Steve, and everyone goes silent.

He hadn't wanted to talk about Steve, had wanted to keep that part of himself safe inside, where the Capitol couldn’t touch it. But Haymitch and Effie had insisted, saying the sympathy angle would win him sponsors, so Bucky talks, spinning a tale with himself at the centre of it, styled as the self-sacrificing hero he knows he isn’t.

He tells the cameras how he met Steve when they were eight and he was in the orphanage, how he moved in with Bucky’s family soon after that, how they've done everything together since then. Sickly, skinny Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes: his brother, his protector. The footage of the selfless moment when Bucky volunteered is replayed, and a convincing tear rolls down Caesar’s cheek.

“I think I’ve got a bit of a crush, now. Am I right, citizens?” Caesar says, pretending to fake swoon as the crowd erupts into thunderous applause.

Bucky smiles at the crowds with newly-whitened teeth, feeling like his heart will break.

This is his punishment, for not telling Steve how he felt when he had the chance.

* * *

The games begin.

He doesn’t have to kill Madge; it's a small mercy. One of the Careers does it for him, and Bucky finds her with five arrows stuck through her slender frame. He weeps over her body until he hears the roar of the hovercraft overhead.

He gets through by hiding and eking out the little food he has left; growing up in the Seam, you learn how to stretch out what you have, to make it last.

Bucky gets discovered a few times, and he’s forced to kill. It doesn’t make him as sick as he thought it would; the slice of his knife through fat and sinew doesn’t feel much different to skinning a deer back home.

Late in the games, when there are few of them left, Bucky is sitting under a tree, cleaning the blood off his knife when he is taken by surprise.

Gabe is a big, burly tribute from District 9, strong from lifting sacks of grain. Before Bucky even realises what's happening, Gabe is choking him with an iron grip on his throat. In the struggle, his lungs bursting with the need to breathe, Bucky manages to wrestle the knife from his pocket and sink it into Gabe's belly.

The others had been quick, quiet; he’d slit their throats in the dead of night, been able to kid himself that they hadn’t suffered.

Gabe isn’t quiet. He’s screaming, gasping, the red pouring from his stomach wound like a river; it’s all over Bucky’s hands, his legs, until he can almost taste the iron tang of blood in his mouth.

Bucky knows he should leave - all this hollering is probably going to attract another tribute - but he doesn’t. He slips his hand into Gabe’s and lets him grip it until the life ebbs from him.

Afterwards, he vomits bile all over the ground, acid yellow. He’s not eaten in days, is dizzy and shaking. That’s when he sees the ooze of blood trickling down his chest from the fresh shoulder wound, and looks at Gabe’s weapon on the ground for the first time. It's a poisoned dagger. The pain is spreading through Bucky’s body, white-hot and raw. Whatever it is, it’s powerful.

He crawls to a bush, trying to at least find some cover.

Time passes – he’s not sure how much – and he drifts in and out of consciousness, hoping death will find him soon.

Bucky’s known he was a goner from the beginning, but he’s tried to keep up the pretence to himself, that maybe he’ll make it through this, be able to go back to Steve and tell him all the things he’s never said to him before.

He thinks of Steve’s soft hair under his fingertips, the stoop of his narrow shoulders when they were bent forward over his sketchbook. The curve of Steve’s mouth: the mouth Bucky had wanted to kiss so many times.

If he has to die, he’ll die thinking of Steve: it’s something.

Then a small silver box drifts down on a parachute. With his last ounce of strength, Bucky opens it and finds a strong-smelling paste, scented with herbs, and a length of gauze: the ingredients to make a poultice. With shaky hands, Bucky spreads the mixture over his wound, hissing as it stings, and wraps the gauze around his shoulder.

Within an hour or two, his head feels clearer: whatever was in the poultice has drawn the worst of the poison out of the wound. Now he’s recovering, Bucky can see the implications of the gift, and who it’s from.

He’s seen the same mixture more times than he could count, has watched Steve measure out the herbs and mash them in his pestle and mortar. Bucky has no idea how much money Steve would have had to drum up from the residents of District 12 for the Capitol to allow this through to their sponsors, but he knows it couldn’t have been easy.

After everything Bucky has done, Steve is still betting on him. It means everything.

He rests for a while, then starts sharpening his knife.

* * *

Bucky wins.

He comes home to his mother’s tears of joy, to Becca’s laughter, and Dot and Evie climbing into his lap.

It’s all worth it – at least he thinks it is, it has to be worth it - until he sees Steve.

Steve is tall, built like a tank, with big arms and hands, and muscled thighs. He’s standing there with hunched shoulders, like he can shrink into himself and appear smaller, but he’s _big;_ there's no getting away from it.

Bucky’s eyes widen. “What the fuck happened to you?”

* * *

He never should have left Steve – _fuck_ , if he’d known that Steve was going to volunteer for some freakish Capitol experiment the second he was gone -  but then, what would he have done? One of them had to go to the games, and if it had been Steve, he would have never come home.

Bucky feels like he could kill Steve with his bare hands: except these days, Steve is easily strong enough to fight him off.

“Is that what you think?” asks Steve, pulling away from Bucky’s touch when Bucky reaches out to throw an arm around him. “That I’m a freak?”

“Of course not, Steve, _no,_ ” Bucky says, a lump in his throat, trying not to cry. “That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what?” Steve’s tone is accusing.

They’ve sneaked away, to their usual spot behind the coal sheds; it's close enough to the perimeter fence that you can see the meadow on the other side.

“Everything feels different,” Bucky manages, looking away from Steve at the trees, swaying gently in the breeze. “I thought at least you’d be the same.”

“Sorry.”

Steve pulls a handful of grass from the ground, shredding it between his fingers, the fingers that are large, but still recognisable as the artist’s hands Bucky remembers.

“How did it happen?” Bucky asks.

“They were looking for volunteers, and they were paying a lot of money. I signed the papers, made sure it would go to your ma and sisters. The other people they tried the serum on, they didn’t-“

“Don’t,” Bucky says, because he can’t hear that Steve – idiotic, brave Steve, _his_ Steve - was ready to kill himself for the sake of helping someone else.

“They’re fine, Buck,” Steve says tersely. “I’m healthy now, we’ve all got enough to eat, and nobody’s had to sign up for tesserae. Your ma went crazy at me when I got back from the Capitol, but I know she’s grateful.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says weakly, feeling like those words barely touch the immensity of what Steve has done for him. He reaches for his hand, and again, Steve cringes away like he’s struck him.

“I'm no hero," Steve says, and his cheeks are pink. “I didn't even say goodbye to my best friend when he was ready to go and die for me.”

"I forgive you, okay? I know what you did for me in the arena. You saved my life. That makes us even."

Steve says nothing. The silence swells, tangible like the wind whispering in the branches above them.

Bucky realises he’s uncomfortable, being here with Steve, and that hurts worse than anything else. If the Capitol have taken everything else from him, he thought at least he’d still have his best friend.

* * *

Over the next few months, Bucky tries his best to hold himself together.

He smiles bright around his mother and sisters, and it works most of the time. Other times, the weight of all those deaths sits on Bucky’s chest so heavily that he can’t breathe. A lot of nights, he wakes up screaming, thinking about Gabe bleeding out all over him, about Madge, cold and lifeless on a forest floor, about the others who’d met their end at the point of his knife.

Becca isn’t so easily fooled. She watches Bucky anxiously, until he cracks and finds himself telling her things no sixteen-year-old girl should ever have to hear. She folds him into her arms and lets him cry, strokes his hair and tells him he’s not a monster. Bucky wishes he could believe it.

Steve is there, too, but he is different now, in mind and body. He has turned eighteen – Bucky missed Steve's birthday when he was in the arena – and comes back late from long shifts in the mines with coal dust on his face and tired, haunted eyes.

As a victor, Bucky is spared the mines. There’s nothing for him to do until the victory tour rolls around. His house in the Victor’s Village feels too big, even with the six of them in it; he rattles around the hallways and landings, restless and alert.

The day after Bucky’s eighteenth birthday, President Snow’s voice booms through the screen on the wall, reminding the citizens of Panem of the upcoming victory tour. Bucky watches, frozen, feeling his breaths turning shorter by the second.

He goes to Haymitch’s house and helps himself to a glass of the clear liquor he keeps stashed around the place.

“Now you get it, kid,” Haymitch slurs, clinking his glass against the table. “There’s no waking up from this.”

Bucky doesn’t say a thing, just knocks back his drink, wincing at the burn in his throat.

When he staggers back to their house, he finds Steve sitting at the kitchen table, sketching. He covers the page when Bucky comes in; he never used to do that, and it’s another sharp sting that cuts straight to the heart of Bucky.

Bucky looks at the proud shape of Steve’s jawline, the calluses on his hands from shoveling coal, and in his drunken haze, thinks about kissing him, the way he always used to want to (still does). He could do it, if he just took a couple of steps forward. Maybe Steve would let him, and Bucky could feel good for once in the wretched, miserable existence that has become his life since the games.

That’s until Steve looks up at him, mouth turned down, and says, “Go to bed, Bucky. Sleep it off.”

Sometimes Bucky thinks he hates Steve, for not having to live through what he did, for being able to look at his own face staring back at him in the mirror without shame.

 _No_ , he doesn’t really hate Steve. He wants him, and that’s worse than hating him, because everything has changed, and they can never go back.

* * *

The victory tour is a welcome distraction. Bucky doesn’t have to think, to feel; all he has to do is smile, laugh, and go to parties. It’s there he finds an even better distraction. There are pretty girls and handsome boys to be found in every District, all eager to get their hands on such an eligible victor.

Bucky’s never been shy – after all, he’s been sneaking girls behind the coal sheds since he was fourteen – so he accepts the flattering invitations, racking up notches on his bedpost with an impressive pace (Haymitch is a little surly when he finds out; he wasn’t ever quite _that_ popular on his own victory tour).

It’s better than feeling numb, anyway.

“I suppose it does go rather well with your bad-boy image,” Effie says, raising an eyebrow over the breakfast table when another disheveled-looking young man stumbles his way out of Bucky’s room.

* * *

When Bucky is reaped for the Quarter Quell as an existing victor, it feels like the natural conclusion to his story: he was never supposed to live.

He realises Haymitch was right: there are no winners. In the end, the Capitol will take everything from you.

The small twelve-year-old girl standing at his side – Bucky is struck by the horrifying thought that Evie is only a year younger - is shaking, tremulous; with no existing female victor for the district, they’ve picked a random name out of the hat. It makes Bucky sick to his stomach, sets off the buried rage under his skin like a match to kindling.

Then Steve steps forward, and Bucky isn’t angry anymore; he could throw up and scream and fall to his knees, because he knows what Steve is going to do, can see it already.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to Bucky, Steve volunteering – Steve, who gets a split lip every other week for telling off guys who catcall girls; who nearly fucking _died_ down the mines last week when a tunnel collapsed and he insisted on making sure everyone else was out before he would leave; who once gave away his entire week’s bread ration to keep a stray kitten alive - it shouldn’t surprise him at all that Steve has decided to do something crazy and be a hero, but watching it happen is still a punch to the gut.

Steve’s voice rings out in the square, loud and clear. “I volunteer as tribute.”

Effie’s nostrils flare; there’s a whispered debate with the games official over loopholes in the regulations, then she turns back to the podium and smiles. The frightened little girl is returned to her area, sobbing with relief. Steve is brought up onto the stage by an arsenal of Peacekeepers.

“I present to you our tributes for the third Quarter Quell," Effie says grandly, "Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers.”

Bucky is frozen with terror, his heart hammering so hard it feels like it’s going to explode out of his chest. He can’t look at Steve.

_No._

It’s the moment Bucky decides he’s going to have to be the one who dies, because he can’t kill Steve.

* * *

“The food’s good,” Steve remarks a few hours out of the district, darkness flashing past the windows and the remains of an enormous meal on the table in front of them. They’re next to each on the big couch, and Bucky is currently trying to stay awake, full and warm and sleepy.

“Isn’t it marvellous?” agrees Effie, but there’s something tight around her eyes when she looks at Bucky and catches him watching Steve before he can look away.

Effie Trinket’s many things, but she’s no fool: Bucky can see she knows already.

“Well,” she pauses delicately, “I’ll leave you two to it.”

On the way out the door, she clutches her chest and murmurs “ _Oh, how tragic”_ loud enough that they can both hear.

Bucky sighs. “She’s a little much.”

“Feels like a bad dream, doesn’t it? Us being here like this,” Steve says.

“Yeah.”

Bucky reaches out for Steve, takes his hand. Steve lets him, and for a moment, Bucky can breathe.

* * *

In the training centre, Bucky watches Steve bypass the other weapons and reach for a shield: a round, shiny metal thing. It’s an odd choice.

By the third day, he’s taking the heads off the practice mannequins with ease, and the rest of them are gathered around, watching in awe.

Bucky’s thinking the same as they are: Steve is _lethal_ , and it’s a little terrifying. Steve has always been meticulous and precise, but Bucky’s never thought to consider that these things would make him a good killer.

Finnick Odair, the trident-wielding boy from District 4, leans in to whisper in Bucky’s ear. “He’s good, your boy.”

Bucky jerks away from Finnick, his cheeks burning.

One thing’s for sure: with that little display, Steve has just put paid to any chance they might have had of making allies. Everyone is going to be gunning for them from the start.

* * *

Bucky jolts awake, shivering and sweating with a nightmare. His room in the training centre is cold.

The door opens. “Bucky?” Steve asks warily.

“I’m here.” Bucky stares down at his hands, reassuring himself that they’re not covered in someone else’s blood (not yet, anyway). His heartbeat thumps in his ears.

Steve comes to sit at the foot of the bed, keeping a safe distance from Bucky.

“I used to wake up like that, during the games,” Steve says. “Thinking about you dying.”

“Shit, Steve.” Bucky can’t deal with this; it’s more than Steve has admitted to him since he came back from the victory tour. His chest tightens. "Don't say that. Just don't."

Steve sighs. "I'm sorry," he says.

"Don't be." Bucky looks at Steve, sitting there with hunched shoulders; he looks small, and scared. "You gonna tell me why we don't talk anymore? Not like we used to."

“You were different, Bucky. It frightened me.” Steve looks away, fiddling with a corner of the sheet. “I didn’t know what to say.”

“Guess we’re both different, huh?” Bucky’s voice has gone quiet, and he isn’t sure why.

“Yeah.” Steve moves up the bed, stretches out a hand to touch Bucky’s shoulder, nothing but a brush of fingers before he pulls away.

At the chaste touch, there’s a throb of longing beneath Bucky’s skin, scratching at his insides like the drag of a knife over flesh. It’s familiar, but it’s been too long since he’s allowed himself to have these feelings around Steve. It never came to anything, and in the end, it hurt too much to dwell on the things he’d never have.

“I don't want you to die,” Steve says, his shoulders shaking.

Bucky makes a grab for Steve’s hand.

“Don’t,” he says sharply, already feeling tears sting at his eyes, because this is _Steve_. Steve was never supposed to know this fear, to be facing his impending death. Bucky was the one who went to the games, who scarred his heart with the dark deeds of his knife because he was trying to keep Steve safe, and it feels like he did it all for nothing.

Steve’s hand curves around Bucky’s cheek. Bucky presses into the touch, leaning in close enough that he can press their foreheads together, feel Steve’s eyelashes flutter against his skin.

That’s it for Bucky. He’s wrung out, probably about to die, and he’s had enough of pretending. He leans in and smashes his mouth to Steve’s, kisses him roughly.

Steve’s body goes tense against him.

Bucky cringes. “I’m sorry, Steve. I know I shouldn’t. But I want you.”

In the quiet of the room, Bucky can hear the way Steve’s breathing falters at that.

Then Steve is kissing him like it’s his last chance – and maybe it is – deep and wet, tongue sliding into his mouth, teeth nipping at his lower lip.

Bucky climbs into his lap and shoves his hips up against Steve’s, gasping as they rut against each other. Steve sucks a bruise into Bucky’s neck and Bucky pulls at his shirt, conscious that he’s the only one bare-chested.

He’s got Steve’s shirt off before he notices an uncertainty in his eyes.

“You okay?”

Steve nods. “Yeah. It’s just – what is this to you?”

“Maybe I don’t want to die without having you, just once.” Bucky keeps his tone light, but just speaking the words twists up his insides; they’re the truth.

In response, Steve just kisses him again, and it’s wetter, messier than before, his hands fisting in Bucky’s hair - barely considered, like all he wants to do is get closer to Bucky, like he could bury himself under his skin.

Bucky tugs down Steve’s pants and wraps fingers around his cock, strokes him slowly until Steve is breathing heavily into the hollow of his neck.

When Steve’s fingers slip into Bucky’s shorts, they’re shaking a little. Bucky smiles, covers Steve’s hand with his own and shows him what he likes. He’s a shade away from losing it when Steve stops.

“You still okay?” Bucky murmurs low, dragging his lips down Steve’s neck.

“Yeah." Steve takes his hand away, rests it on Bucky's shoulder. "I want more. Want to feel you."

“Oh.” Bucky looks at him, feeling like he can't breathe. “I mean, _yeah._ Like I'm gonna say no to that. But I thought you’d never -?”

Steve flushes a little, but he nods. “Yeah, but if it was anyone, I’d rather it was you. Not that I know what the hell I'm doing.” Now he looks embarrassed, and Bucky can't suppress a soft laugh.

"I'll show you." Bucky runs a hand through Steve's hair and kisses him, unsure whether he's trying to quiet his own nerves or reassure Steve. 

Maybe Steve hasn’t done this before, but Bucky has. He gets some slick out of the bedside drawer, spreads it on Steve’s fingers and lies back, guiding his wrist to where he needs to be. Then Steve is pushing a finger inside him, letting out a soft sigh at the tight heat of Bucky around him, and he’s watching every expression on Bucky’s face, like he wants to savour every moment of this.

“That’s good,” Bucky says, breathless already, bearing down on Steve’s hand with a tiny gasp. “But I don’t wanna wait, Steve.”

Bucky could probably do with a bit more prep, but they’re too desperate for each other, too full of tight-coiled need to want to slow things down. Then he feels Steve’s hands on the backs of his thighs, Steve's cock hot against him, and suddenly he’s terrified; this is going to mean something, because it’s _Steve._

Steve notices. "You still want to?" The soft words bring Bucky back to himself, remind him that he wants this, wants Steve, has wanted Steve for as long as he knew what it was to want someone.

He leans up and kisses Steve, hot and needy, rests a hand on his hip where’s he’s pressed up against him.

Steve's breathing hitches, and then he moves. Bucky lets out a low whine when Steve sinks into him - one long, slow, push that knocks the breath from his lungs. Steve feels burning hot and slick in him, so much that Bucky isn’t sure whether he wants to squirm away from the touch or arch up into it; in the end, he does both.

“Okay?” Steve asks, breathing hot against his neck as he draws back.

“Yeah. You gonna get on with it?” Bucky says roughly – he feels like he'll die if Steve doesn’t move soon – and Steve laughs against his skin before he drives back in with another shaky thrust.

Steve is tentative at first, but Bucky pushes back at him to set the pace, and he soon gets the hang of it. He keeps his body pressed close to Bucky’s, one hand curled around the back of Bucky’s thigh and his mouth seeking out his lips for needy, sloppy kisses as he fucks him.

The rhythm of Steve’s hips stutters, and Bucky can tell he’s close; he’s been on the edge himself for what seems like forever. He takes Steve’s hand from his thigh, brings it up to palm at his cock, Bucky guiding each stroke while Steve fucks into him harder. Bucky feels hot all over, losing himself in the friction of sweat-slick skin, the smooth drag of their combined hands over his cock, the tiny sounds Steve makes against his skin whenever he pushes deeper.

Then Bucky’s gone, streaking come all over his stomach and Steve’s in a white trail, biting off a soft moan.

Steve watches him, the taut muscles of his powerful body tensed above Bucky, and in the blink of an eye, he’s coming inside him, all parted lips and glassy eyes.

Bucky thinks it might be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

He lets Steve bury his face in his neck, trying not to think about the fact they’re likely going to their certain deaths.

“Bucky,” Steve says, his breaths coming quick and fast. “That was –“

“I know,” Bucky says, kissing Steve again and again, as though it will make everything okay.

* * *

They’re a good team in the arena, Bucky and Steve, which is just as well. It’s a barren desert with a ring of forest around it; not much cover, and tricky terrain.

Bucky is worried almost immediately, and not just because it takes them three days to find water and they nearly die from that. Somehow, they’ve managed to pick up allies: Finnick, his mentor Mags and some older guy from District 5 called Dugan, who won his games with a homemade electrical device.

Mags and Dugan don’t make it past the first test: a storm that sends bucket-sized hailstones raining down from the sky. They leave them buried there in the icy rubble.

Something doesn’t feel right, Bucky thinks. He's got the mockingjay in his pocket, and he keeps fiddling with it; it's the only thing that makes him feel real, when everything about these games feels anything but.

Steve is cagey, and he keeps doing strange things: biting at his lip, looking away from Bucky when he says something that’s definitely a lie, checking his watch every two seconds. Johanna Mason, the District 7 axe-wielder, joins their team without a word, and keeps exchanging private glances with Steve that make Bucky worry.

When Steve yells “Duck!” and flings his shield at the forcefield, the world bursts into colours behind Bucky’s eyes; reds and golds and greens, and he’s falling -

He thinks this is what death must feel like.

* * *

There are voices. Everything is dark.

“It was a tree. Crushed his left arm.”

“Get on with it. We need him functional.”

“The metal exoskeleton grafts are experimental. We don’t even know if it’ll work.”

“Wait. He’s tachycardic. Have you checked the anaesthesia?”

He is slipping away again.

* * *

“I’m Dr Zola,” says a small man with round glasses; he is unassuming, free of the usual cosmetic surgeries and eccentricities typical to the residents of the Capitol.

“Nice to meet ya,” Bucky says from his hospital bed, defiant. His shoulder throbs – it’s a raw, barely-healed mess, pink lines of inflammation streaking from the join scars. They’ve pumped him full of antibiotics and immunosuppressants in a bid to stop his body rejecting the new metal limb; it’s not working so far.

There’s plenty of morphling, at least; when Bucky doesn’t want to think anymore, he just floats away on a tide of it.

“We need to know what Steve’s plan was.”

“I don’t know a thing.”

He doesn’t; Steve was trying to protect him, as usual.

If only Bucky had actually known something, he thinks later. They might have gone a bit easier on him.

That day, the morphling stops.

He hasn't got his carved mockingjay anymore; not that it would help, but he'd like to have something to remind him of the home he'll never see again.

* * *

Zola leans in so his face is almost pressing against the glass.

“We have reason to believe that Steven Rogers has been working as a key operative in the rebellion against the Capitol for some time. After he left our project, we’d suspected for some time that he was not a loyal citizen of Panem. We believe he may be in a secret base.”

“Really?” Bucky asks, looking away like he’s bored. He’s dirty and tired, hasn’t had a shower in weeks or any food beside prison rations. They’ve kept him in what amounts to a small glass box, only let him out a couple of times a day to relieve himself.

His arm’s a lot better – still disgusting and scarred around the joint, but the doctors tell him the metal exoskeleton has successfully integrated with his biofunctions (whatever that means). It’s hardly a comfort, but at least Bucky doesn’t want to die with the pain anymore. A lot of the time he sits there, flexing and bending his new metal fingers, listening to the whir.

It’s fitting, really, Bucky thinks: now he is the machine he always feared he would become, ever since he went to the games and learned that taking a life was an easy thing to do.

They show him one of the rebel promos; it’s Steve, with that fucking shield, black wings painted onto it: a mockingjay. He stands tall, asking everyone to fight, to take up arms against the Capitol and reclaim the lives that are rightfully theirs.

“They’re calling him the Mockingjay,” Zola says with a smile, watching the way Bucky’s face is stricken at the sight.

That’s just about it, for Bucky. Steve had wanted to do something stupid and go out in a blaze of glory since they were kids, probably, and here he is, putting himself in the sights of President Snow, trying to be a shield between the districts and the Capitol. Bucky is sure there's no way that can end well for Steve.

He's all out of fight. When the Peacekeepers take him from his cell and strap him to an examination table, it feels like what he deserves.

“Where is the base?” Zola asks, looming over him.

There's a sharp pain in Bucky’s flesh arm: an injection. “I don’t know,” he chokes out.

“Where is it?”

Bucky can feel the fuzzing in his brain, the kaleidoscope of colours blooming behind his eyelids, the pain: it’s tracker-jacker venom. He got stung by a tracker-jacker when he was seven; the fever lasted a week and his ma thought he wasn’t gonna make it. The visions he had gave him nightmares that lasted for a year afterwards.

This isn’t going to be good.

There’s another scratch against his arm, and Bucky is floating free, his skin bubbling and bursting before his eyes, and everything is red, red, red.

“ _Where is it?”_

“I don’t know.”

He’s somewhere else already, thinking of Steve. Steve is good and bright and everything Bucky doesn’t deserve, but he can try to hold on to him, just the same.

* * *

“You know, this was meant for your friend Steve," Zola says conversationally. "The program he volunteered for was part of our future weapons development. When we told him this afterwards, he made it quite clear he wanted no part of it.”

“Nice story,” Bucky rasps. “What’s it got to do with me?”

“We have a plan for you, Barnes. If you do not co-operate with us, we may be forced to take action. You have a family back in District 12, correct?”

The searing pain starts up again: it’s in his eyes, his brain, clawing at his insides.

“No!” Bucky screams. His skin is an open wound of blisters, his mind already a scrambled wreck, but he can still see the smiling faces of his sisters, his mother. “Don’t – don’t hurt them. _Please._ ”

“Good.” Zola’s voice is soothing. “That’s it. Let go of them.”

* * *

Bucky doesn’t remember much. They wake him up every day and sting him with tracker-jacker venom, until there’s nothing left of him but the burning in his blood and the rage screaming under his skin.

The game changes.

Zola tells him he is to be the new fist of the Capitol; he will move in the shadows and strike fear into the heart of the rebels. Bucky is given the same serum that turned Steve into a hero, and becomes a perverse mirror image of his best friend. They don't need to train him much; the games have already made him brutal and violent.

They start sending him out on missions, to pick off key rebel figures (he never knows the details). There are so many places, his mangled brain struggles to remember them all: forests of pine, factories that smell like burning rubber, orchards where children whistle in the trees and the chaff from grain crunches under his boots.

He deals death swiftly and silently with the shiny new knife they have given him, and he does not think.

He is a weapon.

* * *

Bucky gets a new mission:

Steve.

_Steve._

_Kill Steve._

* * *

He is pinned to the table, dressed in his old hospital gown: a pretence.

Steve is here, like they promised he would be. He is ripping away the straps, and Bucky has him at a disadvantage.

“Bucky?” he breathes, eyes wide with relief.

Now is Bucky’s chance to prove himself. He rears up, wraps the metal hand around Steve’s throat and squeezes, feels his windpipe start to collapse under the pressure. Steve struggles until he passes out.

Suddenly, there are footsteps behind him, echoing on the metal grilles of the floor, and he is hauled off Steve, snarling and spitting.

When they sedate him, all he can think is that he is a failed, defective weapon.

* * *

It takes weeks to sweat and scream the tracker-jacker venom out of his system; even when it’s out, Bucky still has the visions, the mantra in his brain telling him Steve is his mission, and that he must die. The psychiatrists put him through deprogramming sessions that are almost as brutal as what the Capitol did – still, the fragments that come back when Bucky remembers Steve, his old life are almost worth it.

One day he wakes up and Johanna Mason is there, peering at him curiously. They must have gotten her out of the Capitol when they retrieved him.

“You know, I think the bionic man look suits you,” she says, like they’re talking about the weather. “You definitely look hotter with long hair.”

Bucky laughs. He hasn’t laughed in a while.

Johanna starts wandering into his room on a daily basis. He likes her; she’s the only person who doesn’t try to spare his feelings, and doesn’t panic if he has a ‘moment of instability’, as the doctors like to call the times when Bucky freaks out and starts flinging things at the wall.

Her visits are also a welcome chance to hear some news. The rebellion in the districts is growing – it seems Steve’s Mockingjay persona has galvanised Panem into action - and a force is organising against the Capitol.

The day Bucky hears the rebels got his family out of District 12 the moment he was captured, they have to sedate him. It’s more than his fragile brain can take, the idea that he went through all that, became the Capitol’s fucking _weapon_ , for no damn reason at all.

But at least his family are safe, albeit in an undisclosed location (it is not considered safe for even Bucky to know it). Sometimes, Bucky wonders – with a stab of fear - if they would really tell him if his family were dead.

Johanna would tell him, probably. He trusts her more than the others.

“I’m sorry you didn’t know anything,” she says one day. “Steve was adamant you couldn’t know about the plans; he thought it would put you at risk. One of the head gamemakers was involved, and there was too much at stake.”

“He was always pretty dumb, Steve,” Bucky says.

At that, Johanna smiles.

“Well, I knew some stuff,” she says grimly. “Didn’t make them go any easier on me.”

She reaches up to touch the downy fuzz on her scalp; it’s growing back where the Capitol had shaved off her hair. The sleeve of Johanna’s hospital gown is rucked up, and Bucky can see the same ugly marks on her skin from the tracker-jacker venom. They tortured her, too. Bucky knew it already, but this is different; she is showing him her scars willingly.

 Johanna just shrugs, like it’s no big deal.

“Steve. How is he?” Bucky asks.

“He’s okay. Had a few wicked bruises on his neck for a few hours, but the serum helps him heal quickly. I don’t really see him much, he’s usually in briefings with Colonel Phillips and the others.”

* * *

Finally, Bucky is cleared. They test him out a few times, but the Capitol’s programming has apparently subsided enough for Bucky to pose no threat to Steve, or anyone else. He regains enough functionality to be allowed out of his quarters into the rest of the complex; he’s still not allowed anywhere near Steve, and assumes Steve is avoiding the public areas for a reason.

The underground rebel base is larger than he first thought, and surprisingly well-equipped: this place is packing weapons and tech the likes of which Bucky has never seen, coming from humble old District 12 where the only export was coal. Eyes follow Bucky whenever he walks around; sometimes accusing, sometimes fearful – often, simply curious. Everything is grey - the jumpsuits they wear, the beds, the curtains. 

If only Bucky felt like he was all back together; it feels like some of the pieces of him are still there on Zola’s table, back in the Capitol, and he’ll never get them back.

“I’m so sorry, Steve,” he tells him, when Steve finally comes to visit him in the mess hall, over an unappetising lunch of protein rations.

“It wasn’t your fault.” Steve’s smile is genuine, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and Bucky thinks Steve must have a lot of cares these days, being the symbol of an entire rebellion.

He’s too busy for Bucky most of the time, at any rate.

Later, Johanna comes over and Bucky lets her raid his morphling stash in return for whining about Steve.

“I don’t know what to say to him to make it right,” he says, dejected.

“Got it bad, haven’t you, sweetheart?” Johanna says, a blissed-out expression on her face from the morphling she’s just shot into her arm.

Bucky doesn’t say anything.

* * *

In the mess hall, Bucky spots Finnick Odair, leaning on a pillar and flirting with the woman who serves the meals. Bucky remembers him: Finnick, with his blond curls and seafoam green eyes and dazzling smile that had sent the whole of Bucky’s prep team into fits of exclaiming over his beauty. Infuriating, swaggering – the kind of person Bucky wouldn’t normally touch with a bargepole.

Thing is, when they were in District 4 on the victory tour, Bucky watched him closely, and Finnick’s _good._ He’s good enough at fronting that maybe most people wouldn’t notice, but not so good Bucky couldn’t see the truth. He saw the way Finnick looked at poor Annie Cresta - mumbling to herself, clutching at the arm of a family member – like she was his anchor, the very centre of his world.

Annie Cresta has been missing since the Quarter Quell; nobody knows if she’s alive or dead. Bucky can't understand how Finnick is still here, smiling, but he knows enough to figure out what his smiles cost him.

“Hey, cyborg.” Finnick grins, sliding his tray on to the table next to Bucky’s.

Bucky ignores the slur and goes for the direct approach. He puts a hand on Finnick’s thigh. “I’m asking.”

He’s asking Finnick because he knows he of all people won’t coddle him, won’t tell him that he needs time and he isn’t ready for this yet. If he's honest, he thinks Finnick might need a distraction as much as he does.

“I sure feel honoured.” Finnick’s eyes sweep over Bucky, appraising him. There’s an unpleasant twist in Bucky’s stomach when he remembers he’s hardly looking at his most attractive: wild, tangled hair and a body marked with scars under his grey jumpsuit, not to mention his ugly metal arm.

“So. You in or out, Odair?” Bucky asks, with a fake confidence he doesn’t feel.

Finnick laughs, pushing his tray away. “I like them pretty and damaged, didn’t you know?”

They go to Finnick’s quarters, where Bucky finds Finnick to be as eager and willing and uncomplicated as he expected.

Bucky lets Finnick take him apart; otherwise, he thinks might fly apart, shatter into a thousand pieces until there’s nothing left of who he once was. This is the one thing that might have a chance of keeping him grounded - and it’s the past, it’s always worked.

Finnick’s mouth is on his cock, and Bucky is panting out sharp breaths from between his teeth when he looks down to see Finnick’s hollowed-out cheeks, his eyes, narrowed and stretched tight with effort. People’s eyes look like that when they’re dying. Bucky tenses.

Then Finnick hums against his dick and Bucky stops thinking, squeezes his eyes shut and comes in Finnick’s mouth, hot and shuddering, his metal fingers tight in his hair.

Finnick pulls off with a wet pop and asks, “Can I be inside you? I could fuck you so good you’ll forget everything but the sound of my name when you whisper it to me.” His words are a soft promise in Bucky’s ear, and  _yes,_  that’s what Bucky wants, to forget.

“Yeah,” Bucky says hoarsely, pulls Finnick into a kiss to shut him the hell up.

Bucky is sprawled out on the bed, three of Finnick’s fingers knuckle-deep inside him, when he thinks about how much he wishes this was Steve instead. Maybe Finnick wishes he was someone else, too – and what does it matter, in the end? Bucky knows that bodies are only flesh stretched tight over bones, fragile heartbeats fluttering under skin. He knows how quickly life can fade.

Nothing matters.

“C’mon. Do it already,” Bucky huffs, grinding down onto Finnick’s hand, wanting more.

Finnick smiles, all mocking arrogance. “You’re _adorable_ when you’re all wound up,” he says – Bucky grits his teeth - slips his fingers out of Bucky and mouths at his neck, all heat and the sharp scrape of teeth.

He flips him over and pushes in slowly, hands digging into Bucky’s hips.

Bucky starts shaking in spite of himself, and Finnick pauses, presses a row of careful kisses down his back.

“You okay?” he murmurs, surprisingly tender.

Something in Bucky’s chest aches at Finnick’s soft question; he feels split and full, but it’s good, _so_ good – he remembers this.

“Yeah. I want it hard.”

Finnick obliges, his hips snapping into Bucky’s with a rough, punishing rhythm that has Bucky gasping, clutching at the sheets with one hand and sliding the other one underneath him to make a fist around his cock.

If Bucky closes his eyes, he can almost pretend like it’s Steve, even though the feel of this body is wrong, and Finnick’s skin smells of the sea: salt and iodine, not like Steve, who smells of coal-dust and soap and graphite and something that’s just _him._

“Come on, let go.” Finnick’s voice is commanding in Bucky’s ear, and he thrusts deeper as Bucky speeds up the movements of his hand on his cock. Bucky arches against Finnick and comes - muttering “ _Finnick”,_ though he swore he wasn’t going to - spilling hot and thick all over his fingers and Finnick’s grey sheets.

Finnick comes with a grunt, collapsing against Bucky, sweaty and spent.

There are tears in Bucky’s eyes when he raises his head from the pillow, and Finnick is at least kind enough to look away and pretend like he doesn’t see.

“Not bad, District 12.” Finnick’s grin is lazy as he rolls off him and slumps on to the sheets, breathing heavily, looking like some kind of obscene, bronzed son of Poseidon.

Bucky laughs, the sound hollow in his ears. “I haven’t really had many good reviews of late, so that means a lot.”

“I see the way you look at him, you know,” Finnick says, out of the blue. “The Mockingjay.”

Self-loathing rises up in Bucky’s chest like waves. It’s no wonder Finnick thinks the idea of him wanting Steve is laughable: it is. Steve is good and Bucky is – well, he wasn’t much good to start with, and he’s pretty much at the bottom of the barrel these days, morally speaking.

“And what about your mad girl?” he snaps, before he can stop himself. “Bet Annie Cresta doesn’t even remember your name by now. That is, if she's still -” Bucky stops himself there.

“Maybe not,” Finnick says, and something in his voice shakes. “But one day I’ll see her again, and I’ll make her remember.”

Bucky blinks. “You love her, then? Even though she’s broken.”

Finnick looks at him, pity in his eyes. “Broken things are still beautiful. They still deserve to be loved.”

How Bucky wishes that were true.

* * *

A tall woman with dark curls and an unsmiling mouth shakes Bucky’s hand firmly.

“I’m Peggy Carter. I’ll be your director, supervising the recording of promos while you carry out operations for this division.”

They’re sitting around a long table. Haymitch is slumped at Bucky’s side, newly sober and tetchy. Johanna is there, along with Finnick, Steve and a couple of techies from District 2 – Falsworth, an explosives expert, and Dernier, a munitions designer. Another man wearing a headset comes in and introduces himself as Morita, communications specialist.

The craggy-faced man at the head of the table is Colonel Phillips, from District 2; Bucky remembers that. He’d always come across as such a Capitol apologist, with a reputation for brutal justice among his Peacekeepers; Phillips would be the last person Bucky would be expecting to see leading the rebel forces. Probably, that was the idea: a good cover.

“Let’s talk strategy,” Philips says. "How do you all feel about lighting a fire under the Capitol’s ass?”

Bucky might be completely fucked in the head these days, but this is an idea he can feel good about, for a change. “I’m listening,” he says.

Steve looks at him, a hint of pride in his eyes.

* * *

They call them the _Howling Commandos_ ; they are dropped into the districts, blazing through the Capitol’s plans like fire chasing a trail of fuel. All of them are crazy and brave, following nothing but the black wings of the mockingjay on Steve’s shield.

Over the next months, they bomb military bases and factories, destroy the Capitol’s weapons stores and hit them where it hurts.

Bucky learns to appreciate all the peculiar talents of the team: Johanna is every bit as merciless as her record suggests, Finnick’s charm belies his quick thinking, and Dernier and Falsworth are always coming up with ingenious new ways to use their bombs and charges, chipping away at the Capitol’s defences day by day. Morita keeps their broadcasts going out, punching through the firewalls the Capitol puts up, staying one step ahead of their hacks at every turn.

Peggy is the one who surprises him the most; Bucky didn’t think much of her at first - a film director coming from the Capitol to film the rebels seemed a bit too much like misery tourism for his liking. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Peggy is their beating heart; her sensitively filmed interviews and close-up shots of Steve greeting the victims of the Capitol’s reign of terror are a large part of the reason everyone keeps fighting, when they might have no reason to otherwise.

They’re winning.

Steve always wants to make sure they get every civilian out first. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and the Capitol’s retribution is swift. Those times, it’s hard for any of them to remember why they’re doing this.

Bucky’s just along for the ride; he does his job, with his new sniper rifle and sometimes his old knife. He even gets his own spots in the promos with Steve, as the Mockingjay’s sidekick: the Winter Soldier.

Bucky hates the nickname. Peggy chose it, and he’ll accept she knows what she’s doing when it comes to directing their footage, but it sounds silly, like he belongs in a comic book. Still, if he inspires people (now there’s a hilarious thought), he’ll have to go with it.

Steve is aflame with the rebel spirit when he records their promos, eyes shining like he believes every word – probably, he does. But when the camera turns off, Bucky sees the way Steve’s mouth turns down, watches him walk away with empty eyes and shaking hands.

Now and again, when Steve has just finished a tour of a field hospital, clutching at the hands of those who are dying, their bodies broken by the cruel weapons of the Capitol, he will find a quiet place to cry and vomit all over the concrete.

Those times, Bucky makes sure he stands somewhere nearby, so nobody will bother Steve; he’s careful to make sure Steve doesn’t figure it out.

He wishes he could feel the same revulsion at seeing injuries and death that Steve does.

* * *

These days, Steve and Bucky don’t talk much outside of their promos and the necessary tactical discussions with the rest of the team. Despite that, there are still times when they find each other.

Steve goes into an abandoned building and Bucky follows him, his boots crunching on broken glass and metal. He knows what he's here for.

Bucky can taste the acrid tang of smoke in the air, as familiar as _this_.

“Come on,” Steve says, already gripping Bucky's shoulders, pressing him into the brickwork, kissing him.

This is fucked-up beyond belief: Bucky knows it. They can barely manage awkward, stilted conversation, and yet they can do this like it’s nothing. It's been happening often enough that Bucky craves it, wonders when the next time will be. It shouldn’t be so easy. But it is.

Steve wriggles a hand under Bucky’s tac suit, clasps him hot and hard and strokes him firmly. Bucky buries his head in Steve’s shoulder and gives in to the coiling pleasure rising up his spine, the pressure of Steve’s body on his, like this is all he needs to hold himself together. He comes like that, legs shaking, making a mess inside his trousers and on Steve’s hand.

Wanting to wrestle back some control, Bucky twists against Steve and bites at his neck. He shoves his flesh hand roughly into Steve’s pants and jerks him off with an unrelenting pace that makes Steve’s eyes go wide.

There’s soot in Bucky’s hair and the scratch of smoke at the back of his throat, but it’s okay; everything is okay, as long as he can keep hearing the quiet, broken sounds Steve presses into his neck when he touches him.

Steve comes, gasping out a long, heated breath against Bucky’s skin.

It's not enough, not even close to enough, but Bucky will take it anyway, will take anything that Steve gives, because Steve is the one good thing he has left. 

* * *

When they storm the remains of the Capitol, Bucky is the one to kill President Snow, with a press of his knife across the man’s throat.

“You’ve outdone yourself, freaky cyborg,” Finnick says, looking down at Snow’s corpse, his lip curling in disgust. “Nice work.”

“Yeah, and what would you have done – poked him with your trident?” Bucky laughs, a little breathlessly, at the thought that it’s all over.

“Now there’s a double entendre,” Finnick murmurs, managing a smile though he’s as exhausted as the rest of them.

“I would have done it, you know,” Steve says later, as if it will help.

“I know.” Bucky can’t explain why _he_ had to be the one to kill Snow: he couldn't let Steve taint himself like that. There is already so much blood on Bucky's hands - one more death won't make a difference to his soul, but Steve is better than that, better than him - and he will spare Steve the horror of killing if he can.

Zola is already dead, from an earlier bomb blast the Capitol unleashed in a last-ditch attempt to stop the rebels from taking the city. It’s probably for the best: Bucky doesn’t think about what he might have done to Zola had he found him alive, but he wouldn’t have liked himself for it.

* * *

It takes a while for the Commandos to make it back home, but miraculously, they’re all alive: every last one of them.

A couple of weeks after Snow dies, they find Annie Cresta in a holding cell, exhausted and afraid but ostensibly unharmed. Likely, the Capitol were just biding their time in case they ever needed to use her against Finnick.

Bucky watches Finnick take Annie into his arms and touch her face, soft and reverent, like she’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen. Maybe Finnick had given up Annie as a lost cause, but Bucky has never seen two people look more in love.

He has to look away, his eyes wet.

It’s plain as day, the love and worship Finnick and Annie have for each other. It’s deeper than oceans, knotted together like rope that cannot be torn asunder: if the Capitol, if the demons inside Annie's head, if Bucky's thoughtless words to Finnick that night hadn't wrenched them apart, nothing would.

Bucky knows that kind of love. It’s the love he once had for Steve, back when he was still a charming kid from the Seam who smiled like he meant it.

* * *

The Commandos disband. Johanna promises Bucky she'll visit, even though she probably won’t.

Peggy takes a job in the new Panem administration, assisting Colonel Phillips; he is acting as interim President until the first quorum can be elected, with representation from each district.

Now the war is over, the citizens of Panem are free to make their own stories, to rebuild, rejoice and mourn .

Bucky has wanted this for so long, and now he's finally got it, he's not sure what to do with himself.

He wonders if Steve feels the same.

* * *

Bucky comes home to District 12, in the new Panem. He is twenty years old, but he has seen enough death to last him a lifetime.

Becca is older and braver now, with sadness in her eyes and in her heart. She kisses Bucky's cheek and cries, pulling him into a fierce hug.

“We did it, Bucky,” she whispers in his ear.

Little Dot is now nine, and Evie is twelve. They throw themselves at Bucky, just like the first time he came back from the games, and he laughs and laughs, kisses and squeezes them until they squeal.

Dot examines Bucky’s arm and decides that he is a robot, her small face serious before it creases into peals of laughter. Bucky digs her in the ribs, and promises to let her get a proper look at his metal arm later (she’s decided to wants to be an engineer).

His mother’s face is more lined than he remembers it, the light in her smile faded by long months of worrying, but she is here.

Steve comes in, and immediately, there are shouts of _“Steeeeeeeeve!”_ filling the air.

Bucky hugs his mother, sobbing with gratitude for all the things he has when he has taken so much.

“Your hair got long." She smiles, ruffling it affectionately. “I saw the promos, but I’m not sure they did it justice. I'm going to sit you on a kitchen chair and give it a trim the first chance I get."

* * *

Bucky doesn’t fit into this world, not anymore.

At first, he struggles to sleep in his soft bed, so used to snatching rest propped up against a wall or on a pile of rubble. When he rests, it's in fits and starts, punctuated by red dreams of his knife and the screams of the people he killed. Other times, he wakes in the night, hot and clammy, his dreams full of Steve’s hands, Steve’s mouth and the sounds Steve made when he touched him (sometimes he thinks he imagined all their quiet, desperate moments together).

But Bucky is good at fronting - always has been - so that's what he does. He smiles at Steve, lets jokes roll off his tongue like it’s easy; like it isn’t costing him everything he is to pretend he doesn’t want more.

There are still days when Bucky is so ashamed of who he’s become that he can’t even look at Steve, but gradually, they become friends again: not the Mockingjay and the Winter Soldier, but Steve and Bucky, two kids from the Seam.

Bucky tells himself it’s enough.

“You need to tell him how you feel, kid,” Haymitch tells him, over steaming mugs of tea made by Effie (Bucky didn’t see that one coming, but somehow in this odd world, Effie Trinket and Haymitch Abernathy make sense together). “Lord knows I waited long enough.”

“Who’s going to turn down this handsome boy?” Effie smiles fondly and pets Bucky’s hair until he squirms away.

* * *

Problem is, Bucky’s too much of a coward to tell Steve anything. Things are slowly getting better, and he doesn't want to mess it up.

They’re still living in the old house in the Victor’s Village with Bucky’s family, but it feels like a weight has lifted without the cruel sneer of President Snow’s voice haunting them in every room, without the spectre of the games hanging over their heads.

Bucky’s mother is happy again: she’s baking pies and cakes, and talking about going into business with Brannock Mellark, the town baker. Bucky lets his sisters fuss over his wellbeing, and cherishes every bit of affection they lavish on him.

Steve is busy these days – he’s been elected the youngest ever chairman of the coal miner’s union, is already making strides on the safety improvements District 12 could never afford under the rule of the Capitol – but his eyes are tired and weary.

It scares the hell out of Bucky to think that in the end, the Capitol broke Steve, just like the rest of them.

Since coming back, Steve doesn’t sleep much; he thinks people don’t notice, but Bucky does. He watches Steve and worries. Sometimes at night, he pads to Steve’s door and hears sobs and screams coming through the wood. Those nights, he goes back to his own bed with a heavy heart.

Bucky has no idea how to fix himself, let alone Steve.

* * *

It takes Bucky a long time to pick up a knife again. When he does, he finds great comfort in spending hours with pieces of oak and pine, showering the floor with wood-shavings, whittling until his fingers ache. It’s been so long since he's felt like he could be good at something that wasn’t killing.

He carves a mockingjay and gives it to Steve.  Steve stares at the little wooden bird in his palm for a long time, overcome.

“Becca gave me one, first time I went to the games,” Bucky explains. “When I didn’t have much hope, I’d hold on to this, and remember that I had something to come back to. Thought you might want it, in case you ever feel like that.”

Steve looks at him, and Bucky feels like he might crack under the weight of his own heart swelling in his chest.

“Thank you, Buck."

Steve had burned the Mockingjay uniform when they came home; he was only too eager to leave that part of himself behind. Bucky can understand that, but still, he hasn't forgotten who Steve used to be: before the Capitol, before the games, before he became a symbol.

Back then, Steve always had hope.

* * *

Bucky is crying softly, head in his hands after another nightmare, when he hears his door creak open.

“Go away,” he mutters, not raising his head, not wanting his sisters or ma to worry over him like this.

“No.” Steve’s voice is firm. “I’m done with staying away.”

“Don’t want you to see me like this.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Steve says, then he’s sitting next to Bucky on the bed, wrapping an arm around him. He takes Bucky’s hands away from his face.

Bucky shakes; Steve is warm, so warm.

“You shouldn’t,” he says, trying to pull away. “I’ve done bad things.”

“I know.” Steve doesn’t move a muscle.

Bucky starts crying again, making ugly, wounded noises into Steve’s shoulder. Steve waits until he stops.

“Thanks,” Bucky murmurs.

“That’s it?” Steve says, and he sounds stricken. “Because I stand outside your door all the time, telling myself I’ll go in, that I’ll say it this time.”

“What?”

There’s no answer, but in the darkness, Steve kisses Bucky. It’s just one soft press of lips, but it shatters something inside Bucky.

“I want you,” he says, his hands soft in Bucky’s hair. “You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted. I don’t care what you’ve done; I don’t care how messed up you think you are. All I know is I’m in hell without you. Without this.”

Bucky takes Steve’s face in his hands and kisses him, because words are failing him at this point; Steve gets the hint.

They pant into each other's mouths, manage to get their sleep pants off without too much trouble. Then Steve is hot and naked under Bucky’s hands for the first time since before the Quarter Quell.

Bucky grins, reaches for Steve’s cock with his flesh hand.

“No,” Steve says against his mouth. Then he’s grabbing Bucky’s metal hand, tugging it over. “Touch me with it. It’s okay.”

So Bucky winds metal fingers around Steve’s cock and takes him apart slowly, carefully, until Steve is coming with a whisper of _“Bucky”_ into the crook of his neck.

Still breathing heavily, Steve slides down his body and takes Bucky’s cock into his mouth.

“Oh,” Bucky groans, sliding fingers into Steve’s hair, holding him there.

Steve laughs a little around the length of him, breaths out slow and sucks him down. It takes less than a minute for Bucky to come, feeling like his whole body's been turned to jelly.

Steve licks him clean and presses a kiss to the jut of Bucky’s hipbone that makes him tremble.

Bucky smiles. “We are so fucked-up,” he says, pulling Steve into his arms.

“Does it matter?” Steve snuggles into Bucky’s side, sleepy and content.

“Nah.”

It’s their promise to each other: they will never be the same boys who left home, but maybe they can make their jagged edges and broken pieces fit together, and make something good out of the ruins.

There's hope in just living, one day at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to yell at me in the comments or on **glitteratiglue.tumblr.com.** I have a lot of headcanons and feelings about this particular version of Bucky and am very happy to chat about them.


End file.
